Omission Wins Best Gluten-free Beer Honors at the 2012 Great International Beer & Cider Competition

Jefferson Adams

Jefferson Adams is a freelance writer living in San Francisco. His poems, essays and photographs have appeared in Antioch Review, Blue Mesa Review, CALIBAN, Hayden's Ferry Review, Huffington Post, the Mississippi Review, and Slate among others.

He is a member of both the National Writers Union, the International Federation of Journalists, and covers San Francisco Health News for Examiner.com.

This just in on the gluten-free beer front: Omission Beer took the top two slots to win the honors for best gluten free beer at the 2012 Great International Beer & Cider Competition in Providence, R.I.

A total of four hundred seventy (470) beers and ciders from breweries from around the globe competed for top honors.

Judges in the blind tasting competition presented first, second and third place awards in 44 categories of ales, lagers and ciders.

The judges included eighty-three professional brew meisters, beer industry professionals, and beer journalists, who were given only the style and subcategory of each beer and cider they judged.

Omission Lager received the gold medal, and Omission Pale Ale earned silver in the gluten free beer category. Third place went to St. Peters Brewery in Bungay, Suffolk, UK, for their St. Peter’s Dark Sorghum beer.

Omission beers use traditional ingredients, including malted barley, that are specially crafted to remove gluten. Omission tests gluten levels in every batch both at the brewery, and at an independent lab, using the R5 Competitive ELISA gluten test to ensure that the beer measures well below the Codex gluten-free standard of 20 ppm or less.

The R5 Competitive ELISA is currently the best test for measuring gluten levels in fermented beverages. Omission posts test results for each batch of beer on their website: www.omissiontests.com.